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Replacement for Ibanez AFR pickup

Discussion in 'Pickups & Electronics [BG]' started by DavidEdenAria, Dec 21, 2014.

  1. Dec 21, 2014 #1
    DavidEdenAria

    DavidEdenAria

    Dec 13, 2013
    On a Hill
    My 1997 SR800 is a great bass....the only problem is the 'E' string is louder than the 'A' string on the J bridge pickup.

    I have spent much time trying to adjust the J bridge pickup....no matter what I do the the 'E' is always louder than the 'A'.

    The P neck pickup balances perfectly across the strings, but of course, has more adjustment in the first place.

    Unless I can access the polepieces in the 'J' pickup on the 'E' side, I am contemplating another 'J' pickup that I can drop in to go along with the stock Ibanez 'P' AFR pickup which I really like.

    Or can I access the polepieces on the 'J' and push down the 'E' poles or raise the 'A' poles a bit?

    Is there a great replacement for the AFR 'J' bridge pickup that will drop in and blend okay with the stock AFR 'P' pickup?
     
  2. Dec 21, 2014 #2
    JustForSport

    JustForSport Guest

    Nov 17, 2011
    There's no way to access the pole pieces in those active pickups- the internal preamp is epoxy cast inside the cover with the coil.
    I don't know how one (single-coil inside) pickup could be much better or worse from one string to the next- what is the string height difference between the 2 strings at the pickup?
    First, I would try to lower the E side and/or raise the G side some to see if that helps.
    I'm not sure who Ibanez had make those pickups, but there are very few active jazz pickups in the single-coil jazz shape. There is a set of Peavey active P/J pickups in the Classifieds, but I don't know who Peavey commissioned for those, either- could be same as the Ibanez ones. Whether it would be an improvement or not over what you have now...?
    Also, I think Ibanez had a thing going with EMG regarding the active pickups from the early '80s, so they could even be EMGs.
     
  3. Dec 21, 2014 #3
    DavidEdenAria

    DavidEdenAria

    Dec 13, 2013
    On a Hill
    I've already adjusted the pickup...lowering the E side and raising the G side....doesn't help...no matter what I adjust, the E is always louder than the A.

    I am now wondering if there is some way I could compensate another way....I haven't tried a bit of compression but its likely that could help a bit.

    The strings on this bass are Ernie Ball rounds that GC uses out of their bulk stock, not even 3 hours on them.....the A string does not seem dead, but could there be an issue with the string itself causing a bit of volume loss?

    I am going to play around with the actual individual string height...